Almere City II

Promotion without a play-off is rare in Dutch football, and Jong Almere City earned it the hard way, by finishing first in the spring 2022/23 Beloften Eredivisie. The title, combined with a change to the KNVB's regulations that saw other Tweede Divisie youth sides relegated, sent the reserve team straight up to the third tier for 2023/24 — a route round the play-off system it had already navigated once before, in 2017/18, when winning the first period of the Derde Divisie Zaterdag and then beating UNA and JVC Cuijk in the promotion play-offs carried it into the Tweede Divisie for the first time.

The side, known formally as Jong Almere City FC and informally as The Black Sheep, exists to develop players for Almere City FC and wears the parent club's red shirts and colours at the Yanmar Stadion, whose capacity rose to 4,501 after the stands were rebuilt in January 2020. It dates only to 2016, when it entered the Derde Divisie and finished 14th in its debut campaign, and its most recognisable graduate never played for it at all: Sergiño Dest passed through the Almere City academy between 2009 and 2012, before Ajax, Barcelona and a United States call-up, leaving before the reserve side even existed in its current form.

The 2023/24 return to the Tweede Divisie began on 2 September 2023 against Excelsior Maassluis and closed with an eighth-place finish, safety rather than spectacle, with David Garden — signed from FC Eindhoven — leading the scoring.

Whatever ground the team covers in the lower divisions, the fixture that matters sits across the water: Almere and Volendam meet in the Markermeer derby, and Jong Almere City's version of it, against Jong FC Volendam, carries the same edge down a level.